Les Houillères en 1869

Abstract

THIS is an annual publication of a semi-official character, proceeding from M. Burat, the Secretary of the very useful Association of Coal-mine Proprietors in France. We are not aware that any such committee of coal owners exists in Great Britain, although other trades or professions, such as bankers, railway companies, &c., have similar committees. The Iron and Steel Institute, which has lately been holding its meeting in London, fulfils to some extent this purpose in regard to the iron trade. Wherever such associations exist we wish that they could be persuaded to publish as complete and valuable reports on the condition of their branch of trade as we have in these annual reports on the French coal trade, now available for ten or eleven years back. The present report consists of four chapters, which treat respectively of the strikes of the coal-miners, which had greatly interfered with the trade, improvements in the machinery and modes of working coal mines, the statistical conditions of the production of coal in 1860, and the legislation which had taken place in relation to the trade. It is impossible to avoid feeling, however, that the interest of such a complete statement is much reduced by the events which have occurred since the year to which it relates. All industrial improvement in France must be greatly retarded, if not converted into retrogression, for some time to come. The remarks on the subject of strikes form perhaps the most interesting part of the volume. England is the birth-place of trades' unions, and our capitalists feel their influence severely; but it is among an unstable and disaffected population, like that of the French manufacturing and mining districts, that they produce really evil effects, M. Burat gives emphatic testimony to the high character of British workmen, wholly uneducated as they often are. He says (p. 135), “Once again, in traversing the coal fields of England, we have been struck with their superiority, due not only to the special conditions of the coal basins, but to the aptitudes and the discipline of their working population.”

Les Houillères en 1869.

Par Amédée Burat, Secrétaire du Comité des Houillères Françaises. Texte et Atlas. (Paris, 1870. London: Williams and Norgate.)